How many of you never use fuel injector cleaner?

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I bought this stuff at Dollar Tree for a $1.00 a bottle, its made by Warren and I put a bottle in my company truck, which idles alot and was a dog and it seemed to help, I dont think it was my imagination because I was skepical at best, but figured what the hay, its only a buck. Ive used Chevron Techron, Gumout and Valoline with no real noticable performance gains, I usually wait till my fuel milelage suffers and add a bottle to my wifes car and the milelage comes back up, so it does something, wether its cleaning or fooling the computer, I dont know. Try that Dollar tree stuff, its seems to work as good as any. They make a black bottle, injector cleaner, a white bottle, fuel/valve maintence, to be added every tank and a red, octane booster, all just a dollar each, best deal, Ive found yet.
 
Don't know if you saw my other thread, but I hadn't used anything in the Volvo 850 for few years (it's been at least 3 since I last had FP). So I used a bottle of PI, at a high dose, last month. I was fairly surprised how much better the car runs. Dunno if it was the injector or the cc's that "changed" but the car has much more low end grunt on hills, etc.....not fair to say my MPG went up 2-3 mpg, because I did go from syn 15W-40 to syn 0W-30 after a few tanks of fuel or so! (and the oil drained very "fuel/PI" loaded...if odor is any indication!)
 
I like the Chevron Techron and Valvoline fuel treatments...though none have ever really increased fuel mileage...I am gonna try the Amsoil stuff soon!...Thing is rotating my tires and proper inflation netted me 3 mpg...no [censored]!...also using AC less...so that could have something to do with it...I know the Amsoil stuff is reasonalbly priced and all...and I will try it!...
 
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modern injectors are self cleaning. dirty gas should be cleaned up by the fuel filter. also most injectors have a super fine screen inside them as a last line of defense


I'd say that some setups are designed to make valves self cleaning ..and some injectors are more prone to being fouled by dirty fuel. Newer foreign injectors have up to 12 very fine holes.

Many of us are basing our opinions on near decade long (and old) experience. If I used that as an indicator.. I'd say that something like a Seafoam treatment was needed if you experienced some pinging in warm weather or whatever. That's all I experienced for the first 5 or 6 years of my wife's jeep usage. It didn't appear to have fuel issues that were remedied by injector cleaner until it got around 100k+ and was more evident in the last couple of years. The improvements with the use of injector cleaner have been more profound and were required more often. I don't think our standards for fuel quality are good enough any more.

During this whole time, fuel economy was more or less not effected. Drivability issues were insidious in their progression. After the treatment you would feel the open loop drivability increase a decent bump until the fuel trims realigned. You would then notice less downshifting ..etc. For me this is no longer an annual event. Even quarterly produces results. I used to look at guys that would put in some injector cleaner real often and kinda calculate how much more they were spending in per mile costs (even with cheap stuff). I didn't think it necessary then ...but this is now and my current experience says that it's required much more often.

Hey, I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS. The thought of frequent or perpetual fuel treatments WAY goes against my "set it and forget it" lazy man's philosophy. I can't even pay my bills on time if not for electronically scheduled payments. I'm a dragon slayer not a sheepherder (tending to the flock). Sump too small ..make it bigger ..and forget about it for the rest of time. It's been killed. This is fuel thing is one dog, for me anyway, that just ain't staying home no matter how much I beat it.


Edit: I wish I had a better code scanner. If I could monitor the fuel corrections in the adaptive cells I could see how fast this fouling occurs. My system does a decent job of compensating for fuel system degradation ..but it can't poll individual injectors for O2 reading variances ..nor can it adjust pulse width for individual injectors. You get averaged O2/rich/lean readings. Some of you surely have more sophisticated fuel management systems that can make injector cleanliness a non-issue for a much longer time. Again, this was never a problem for me in the past.

Now I do recall that when gasohol was introduced, I needed to change 3 fuel filters before it stopped plugging them ..but this was "back in the day" (late 70's).
 
We'ew seen marketing's "before and after" injector cleaner pics...or is it actually "clean and dirty"?.
 
I've used redline fuel injector cleaner and it straightened out an erratic idle before in the past. good stuff
 
I don't use any. On my 4 valve SHO motor there is only one valve that gets a direct spray from the FI. This valve stays squeaky clean. The other will carbon up slightly. But almost all this carbon comes from the PCV system in the form of blowby gas. FWIW I use E10 cheap 89 octane gas.

I also run a catch can to condense out these gasses and therefore the secondary valve gets so little build up. On the same style motor without the condensation of the gasses the secondary valve has carboned up to the point of sticking closed and bending the valve stem on a few of them.

But any amount of in the tank or through the fuel rail cleaner will NOT help this a bit. You have to either prevent the blowby gasses from getting there of take the top of the engine apart to clean it.
 
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